Cullen Wassell

OMG, you have no idea how much I want that nixie tube Fluke meter.

It sure is.

I would be making these sets to use inside. I wouldn't use cloth covered wire outside.

You guys are thinking of the normal green poly sockets for zipcord. The sockets in question here that CDI sells are black bakelite twist-on sockets with pins to pierce the insulation and they are meant for twisted wire. Noveltylights sells them individually and sundial wire sells short sample pieces of all the wire they sell so I may go that route first, for testing purposes.

Does anyone know if they will pierce into modern cloth-covered wire on their own? Or would I have to "help" them by making a tiny starting slit in the cloth braid with, say, an exacto knife? I found some beautiful red/green cloth-covered twisted wire online, and some beautiful vintage reproduction round plugs on the same website, and CDI has bakelite C7/C9 vampire/pin type sockets designed for twisted wire. Yeah, I've got ideas alright...

I've posted these pics elsewhere but I'll post them again at the bottom of this post. I finally broke down and bought a set of ceramic C7s from HLE to try. Read on. The standard multi-color pack offered by most of the online stores that sell these comes with 5 colors: red, green, orange, blue and warm white. As is typical with LED, the blue and green are brighter than all the rest, even with the latest retros. Though the problem is not quite as severe as it used to be, it is still very much there and noticeable. It's a 180-degree flip from incandescents: in those, blue and green tend to disappear as you back away, they're just not bright enough. With LED, the blue and green are piercing. Then there's the issue of how harsh the blue is - it gives off a noticeable 'black light' effect, that seems to get worse as you get farther away. Using 7 colors does 2 things. #1, it adds two additional 'warm' colors - gold and pink - and it reduces the number of blue and green, without creating an imbalanced effect, for those sticklers for having an equal number of each color, like me. I also recommend using teal in place of blue. http://www.holiday-light-express.com by @hotrod1965 is one of the only online stores I know of that stocks the ceramic teal, and the only store I'm aware of that allows individual purchase of bulbs, rather than by boxes of 25 at minimum, which allows you to "Mix 'n Match" your own color combination. The teal is definitively blue - but it is a much softer, prettier blue, without the harsh sharp edge of regular LED blue. So this is what you get when you switch blue for teal and use 7 colors, these are the HLE Minleon C7s. The color sequence I finally chose, after playing around with it a bit, is red-green-gold-teal-orange-pink-warm white. Note that while not quite as warm as incandescents, the ambient glow in the room is definitely on warm side: Thanks again @hotrod1965, dare I say I actually like these, despite being heavily skeptical at first. Gotta try the C9s now...

7 colors, "teal" in place of blue. The teal is blue, but a much nicer shade of blue. Bottom pics are deliberately underexposed.

Go with the HLE bulbs. Use 7 colors, substituting teal in place of blue - red / green / orange / teal / warm white / pink / yellow. A total of 5 'warm' colors and the mellower teal instead of blue should create an overall warm glow. I have such a set of 29 C9s from HLE waiting at the house, I'll be by in a few days to check 'em out.

This was the pic that sold me on the teal idea. (And the 7 colors.) It definitely looks like a nice mellow alternative and actually similar to the way the more recent incan blues light up. By contrast, regular blue LEDs actually seem to give off a bit of a black light effect, and to that end, my neon yellow high-vis vest does in fact glow under a blue LED.

@hotrod1965 I was doing some poking around in a FB group I'm in and I came over something that might be just the ticket... so I just sent an order your way. Gonna try this... I've been told replacing blue with teal does the trick in getting rid of that typical LED harshness. Ordered a total of 25... 4x R/G/Y/T 3x WW/O/Pi. Having a total of 4 warm colors (red. yellow, orange, pink) should help too...

Okay, so I realize this is subjective. That being said, I just can't dig the stereotypical hyper-saturated LED colors. No matter how hard I try. I wanted to like that look. I still want to, because it's the future...or is it? Well... I did a little experiment to that end last night. First pic - as they came from the store right after I bought them last year. Second pic - after swapping the globes onto an identical (Energy Smart) warm white strand I bought last night. They look like real lights now. And actually, the warm white strand uses 2.8 fewer watts than the original multi strand they were on. @hotrod1965, proof-of-concept for what I was bugging you about last year. These look so much more like Christmas now.

Bumpity bump. I've had these GE LED C9s for a year. Last night, I located a warm white GREEN label (Energy Smart ConstantON) spool at Lowe's. The base design is the same, so the clear faceted globes are interchangeable with the multi-color 'opaque' globes. I swapped them over and this is the result. Much more pleasant, IMHO. Sorry for the crappy tablet camera pic. The charger for my DSLR battery is MIA and she's deader'n a doornail.

Looks like in the multi opticore bulbs, they need to dial down the brightness of the green, it's overpowering versus the rest of the opticore bulbs, not to mention the GEs. Sad that these LED retrofits have been around for a decade plus now and while they have legitimately improved leaps and bounds, there are still some critical issues from the early days that it appears no one even cares to address. I've been beating the "warm white LEDs in every color" drum for a while now, but it's always fallen on deaf ears. I guess I'm going to have to go directly to Minleon at this point to request this and commit to a minimum order.

25-2700K warm white LEDs exist. Why the manufacturers are not putting those inside the colored plastic globes/covers is truly beyond me. I often hear fading as the reason, but properly colored plastic should outlive the lights themselves in that regard. I was actually discussing this possibility with @hotrod1965 on youtube. (lt1caprice57l - and yes, I'm serious about my willingness to pay for samples of such if you could get some.) I bought these at Lowe's - they are GE Energy Smart C-6 lights. They come in faceted warm white, faceted multi, and this style, which is by far my favorite of not just the GE LEDs, but all store-bought LEDs: Lights of any type, but especially LED, are hilariously difficult to photograph accurately - the color is less muted in real life, but the blue and green are not overpowering like they are with most LEDs. And the white is very warm, much warmer than the photo would suggest. Additionally, they are capacitor smoothed, which means they have barely any flicker at all. You have to be moving your eyes quickly to notice it.